Every Word You Cannot Say

by Iain S. Thomas

I feel like I’m waiting for something but I don’t know what it is.

I know that you get ink on your fingers and don’t know when it’ll come off.

I know strangers can stain your heart in the same way.

I want you to know that despite how wrong everything seems right now, you are someone special, in someone else’s story.

Reach out, and touch their heart. Because somewhere, they are reaching out to yours.

Everyone you meet along the way is just someone at a different point in their story. So be patient and kind.

But don’t let anyone tell you how your story should go. Only you know how your story goes.

A story does not stop being a story when you turn the page.

Your story is special.

It means you need to find ways to fight less.

You cannot say it is the absence of them, and the presence of them, and the difference between those two things, that hurts the most.

You can be someone who matters to others. You can be someone who matters to you.

We try to sound clever, instead of listening to the heartbeat in the stars.

There is only one real sin in the end, and that is not being who you are, not listening to your soul, and forgetting who you wanted to be.

We all want to love. We’re all afraid we are alone. We’re afraid no one will know who we were.

Forgive yourself for being you— you have done nothing wrong and tomorrow is another chance.

(What you feel is not brokeness, it is the desire to love yourself how you were meant to be loved.

Only you hold you back, or push you forward

“You are good enough. I’m sorry you’re afraid. You deserved to be loved the way you want to be loved. There is nothing in you that needs to be fixed.

if you love hard enough, your feet leave the ground

(You are still everything you could be.)

Break every vow that hurts you. Take every opportunity. Light all fires. Turn all keys.

Trust me when I say I love you like the light in autumn loves the leaves, like a wave loves the sand, like good loves bad, like everything we can still be to each other.”

Hold on to the incredible parts of you that survive.

You love again. Recycle your heart. Someone out there needs it. —Remember this.

There is a special kind of sadness that can only be found in the confusion between who you think you are and who you think other people want you to be

You are the person who asks who they are. You are a wonderer. A searcher.

There are days when everyone needs you to be strong, even if you’re dying inside, and you can only cry when no one’s looking because you’re petrified of letting them down.

And sometimes anger is your body’s way of telling you that you’re ready to change things.

This page is Here to tell you that it’ll be ok. This page is Here for every time you were told you cannot do it, to tell you that you can.

Back in the dream I ask you if you would burn with me, if I burned, and you tell me that you’ve always burned for me, and in the dream, I believe you.

Surely, if love is a storm then all you need to do is be brave and get in a boat. But you should know, the best people can’t be found on any map.

“It hurts because we have hearts. It hurts because we’re human and we need to hurt this way, or we’d be something else.”

I hope you can close your heart like a flower between these pages.

You cannot fix me because I am not broken. And even though everything has changed, I am still more me than I’ve ever been.